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May 25, 2010 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:30
May 25, 2010, Tuesday, Hour #1
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Welcome to today's edition of the Rush 24-7 podcast.
That is right, Johnny Donovan.
And it is a very, very difficult job selling my fellow Americans on the moral superiority of individual liberty and its main ingredient, limited government.
Well, once again, it's Walter E. Williams.
And I stress E because there's another Walter Williams out on the West Coast.
And until he leaves us, I'm going to insist that you use Walter E. Williams.
Now, what I want to do, you know, let's start off the show by, I want to put to rest a lot of controversy out there, namely the controversy surrounding the interview with Rand Paul on the Rachel Maddow show.
Now, for those of you who haven't kept up, Rand Paul, he is the U.S. Senate hopeful.
He's a Republican from Kentucky.
And he's caught up in a swirl of misunderstanding in response to his comments on the MSNSNBC show.
He's been, matter of fact, he's been dishonestly accused of saying that private business have a right to discriminate against black people.
But there's a partial, I think the Rachel Maddow people, they're just lying.
He did not say that.
He says, let me go back.
Maddow says, I'm reading the transcript, says, do you think that a private business has the right to say, we don't serve black people?
Paul answered, quote, I am not, I am not, I'm not, yeah.
I'm not in favor of any discrimination of any form.
Now, what the news media did, they took that statement, I'm not, I'm not, yeah, as being, yes, I am in favor of private discrimination.
Paul did not say that.
They're just making it up.
Now, of course, Paul did tell people, and Madow included, that while he supported the 1964 Civil Rights Act, in general, he thought that the provisions banning private discrimination might have gone a little bit too far.
And with that comment, the Democrats launched an attack on Paul, accusing him of being a racist.
Republicans criticized.
The Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele said Paul's philosophy is misplaced in these times.
But he added that Paul has a libertarian perspective.
And he has a very, very strong view about the limitation of government intrusion into the private sector.
Well, let's look at this issue of discrimination in private acts.
I'm not talking about discrimination in public schools.
I don't think should be allowed.
Discrimination in public libraries.
I don't think allowed in anything involving government.
I don't think that racial discrimination should be allowed, should be permitted.
But in private acts, I'm asking, should people have the right to discriminate by race, sex, religion, and other attributes?
Well, in a free society, I say, yes, they do have the right to discriminate.
Now, let me give you some examples.
You say, Williams, what are you talking about?
Well, back in 1960, when I was choosing a marriage partner, I systematically discriminated against white women.
I didn't give Asian women an equal chance to marry me.
I didn't give women with criminal records or women that did not bathe regularly.
I did not give them an equal opportunity to marry me.
Now, you might say, I Williams, look, that kind of discrimination doesn't hurt anybody.
Well, if you said that, I would be insulted because when I chose to marry my wife, Mrs. Williams, I harmed other women.
I reduced their opportunity set.
And so I did harm other people.
Now, but here's other kinds of discrimination.
And let me ask you, do you think people should have the right to discriminate this way?
For example, the Nation of Islam discriminates against having white members.
The Aryan Brotherhood discriminates against having black members.
The Ku Klux Klan discriminates against having Catholic and Jewish members.
The NFL discriminates against having female quarterbacks.
The NAACP Board of Directors, at least according to their photo on their website, has no white members.
So I think one of the things that we have to recognize, that people do discriminate.
Matter of fact, a good working definition of discrimination is just the act of choice.
And when you say, well, I'm going to choose according to race, I'm going to choose according to sex, I'm going to choose according to blah, blah, blah, blah, you're just specifying the choice criteria.
Now, there's another question that we have to ask.
That is, under our Constitution, the federal government has no legal authority to prohibit discrimination by private entities.
They have absolutely, there's nothing in the Constitution.
And I want one of these sharp lawyers out there to call the show and tell us where in the Constitution.
I don't want any mumbo jumbo.
I just want a statement in the Constitution that the federal government can stop private discrimination.
There's no authority whatsoever.
And so Title II of the 1964 Civil Rights Act is unconstitutional.
Now, of course, states have the right to prevent discrimination, but should they do so?
You know, see, one of the things that you have to keep in mind, ladies and gentlemen, that the true commitment or the test of one's commitment to freedom of association doesn't come when he allows people to be free to associate in the manner in which he deems okay.
The true test of one's commitment to freedom of association is when you allow people to associate in ways that you find offensive, that you find personally offensive.
It's just like free speech.
One's commitment to free speech does not come when he allows people to be free to say those things with which he agrees.
The true test of one's commitment to free speech comes when he allows people to say those things which he finds offensive.
So a lot of people who are against various forms of discrimination, they're really against individual freedom.
Now, here's a question.
It's kind of interesting if you look at Rand Paul's response to some of the criticism.
He's not defending his position.
I mean, I think that what he should do, he should aggressively defend whatever he said, pointing out the idea that people should be free to make choices.
But I believe that Paul, like many other people, they might feel guilty.
They might feel a sense of white guilt.
So what I have for these people who feel a sense of white guilt, you just go to my webpage, walterewilliams.com, and click on gift.
And this will take care of your problems of feeling guilty.
Well, we can talk more about this, and that's what we're going to do when we come back.
And you can be on with us by calling 800-282-2882.
We'll be back.
This is Walter E. Williams filling in for the vacationing Rush Limbaugh.
And you can be on with us by calling 800-282-2882.
Now, we're talking about discrimination.
I know a whole lot of people out there are saying, well, Williams, yeah, you have the right to discriminate against various women.
The Aryan Brotherhood has the right to discriminate against black members, but that's different.
It's not like trolley cars, restaurants, and hotel services that Title II of the Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, and nationality, and religion.
Now, let's keep in mind that just because a place is a public accommodation, just because it deals with the public, doesn't mean that it's owned by the public.
That is, these places are privately owned.
And I think that the owner should decide who is admitted under what conditions.
That decision should be up to the owner.
But let's say, let's look at this a little bit further.
Even if people are permitted to discriminate on the basis of race and sex, will they do so?
Now, for example, let's put it another way.
There are many things that I can do that I have the right to do, but will I find it in my interest to do it?
For example, I can empty my wallet in the street.
I'm free.
There's no law against my emptying of my wallet in the street.
Well, will I do it?
Because I'm free to do it.
Now, one of the things that you have to keep in mind is that whenever you see a law on the books, why do you think that law is there?
Well, the law is there because not everybody would behave according to the specifications of the law.
That's why the law is there.
So you say, well, why were there all these Jim Crow laws mandating segregation?
Well, if white people would not associate it with black people, why in the world would you need a law forcing them to do so?
Let me give you a very, very good example of this process.
There's an article written by a former colleague of mine, Jennifer Roeback, and it appeared in the Journal of Economic History.
And the title of the article was The Political Economy of Segregation, The Case of Segregated Streetcars.
Her name is Jennifer Roebeck.
She was a colleague of mine at George Mason University.
Now, in the early part of our history, streetcars were privately owned.
In the 1890s, there were ordinances written, laws written, requiring the streetcar companies to maintain segregated cars.
That is, to put blacks in the back and whites in front.
This was in Augusta, Houston, Jacksonville, Mobile, Montgomery, and Memphis.
Now, why did the city, why did these cities have a law mandating that streetcar companies segregate their trolley cars?
Well, if the private companies wanted to segregate their trolley cars, why would you need a law?
Obviously, they did not want to.
The same thing can be said with the segregated lunch counters, segregated hotels, segregated movie theaters, all these other Jim Crow laws.
Why would these Jim Crow laws be on the books if white people would not allow a black to come into restaurant?
Obviously, some white people would.
And the Jim Crow laws would be, the segregation would begin to break down.
For example, let's say that I'm a white person and you're a white person and we own restaurants.
And you want to maintain a segregated restaurant.
And I say, I'm not going to maintain a segregated restaurant.
I'm going to allow whites and blacks to come in mine.
Well, what you're going to do, you're going to lose business.
Or at least you'll be envious of me because I'm getting more business.
So you'll have incentive to get a law enacted mandating that everybody have segregated facilities.
It's a matter of fact, it's very interesting.
It's the same phenomena with cigarette smoking.
You know, some jurisdictions, some of the restaurants ban cigarette smoking.
But what they found, they were losing customers to restaurants that did allow cigarette smoking.
So what did these restaurants get city councils to do?
They tried to get city councils to make all of the restaurants ban smoking so that they would not lose customers to the restaurants that had much more flexibility.
So what I'm arguing is that we would not have seen as much segregation had it not been for the Jim Crow laws.
And what the 1964 Civil Rights Act did, it offset another source of government power, namely the Jim and Crow laws that created segregation in the first place, or that at least backed it up.
Well, I believe another thing can be said about this so far as slavery, slavery in our country.
That is, we have to ask the question, how come slavery died without a great war in Brazil, in Europe, in the Caribbean, and we had a great war here.
Well, again, it was a government in our country that backed slavery, that made slavery last longer than it otherwise would have.
And I'll give you a couple instances.
The Fugitive Slave Acts, I believe, of 1790, and then there's another one in 1850 where it held that slaves that escaped, let's say, from Virginia, a slave state, to Pennsylvania, a free state.
Well, it was a violation of the law for people to assist runaway slaves.
And so that made government backing slavery in our country.
So it lasts longer than that.
And I think that it took an ugly Civil War, very costly war, to end it.
And matter of fact, for those of you who don't know the war, the Civil War was not fought to free slaves.
It was fought for some other issues.
So anyway, I think that here's my suggestion to Rand Paul.
I think that he ought to vigorously defend his position.
But I can kind of sympathize with him because it's difficult to take principled positions when you're discussing the ideas with people who have little understanding.
That is, he was discussing the idea with Rachel Maddow.
And I've never watched the show, but I just caught a glimpse of it when this whole controversy came up.
And she's a person of little understanding.
I think that the Republicans who criticize him, they're people with little understanding, or they're people who just don't have much guts to do the right thing or to say the right thing.
There are many things that are politically unpopular, but you have to rest on principle rather than political popularity.
It's easy for Walter Williams to say that.
Why?
Because I'm unaccountable.
I can be irresponsible.
I can talk about liberty.
I can talk about the United States Constitution.
I can talk about how Congress and the President, and not just Obama, but Bush and the Republican Congress, how they all dumped on the United States Constitution.
Because I'm unaccountable to anyone.
Matter of fact, people say to me, Williams, you're very bold.
Well, I'm not bold.
I'm not brave either.
I think I say what I say, and I take the stance that I take, and I announce them, because I have highly diversified source of income.
That is, I get my income from a number of sources, so I can tell any two or three of them to go fly a kite.
We'll be back with your calls after this.
And the number is 800-282-2882.
Walter Williams sitting in for vacationing Rush Limbaugh, and you can be on with us by calling 800-282-2882.
And let's go to the telephones and welcome to the show, Juan from Miami.
Welcome to the show, Juan.
Hi, how are you?
Thank you for having me on the show.
Okay.
I'd first like to say that I'm a right-wing ultra-conservative.
And I'd like to say that what Ron Paul is saying about businesses being able to discriminate is wrong.
The reason why is because I used to own a grocery store.
And I'll give you a perfect example.
In 1992, we had Hurricane Andrews come by here.
And we could not raise the price of water because it was called price gouging.
Okay, I believe that businesses, when they open their doors open to the public, they create a public service, a civic duty, businesses have.
Not a private club, but a business.
And I think that we as a publication.
Wait, wait, wait.
Who owns the business?
Who owned your business?
My father owned the business.
Okay.
What about if you wanted to paint the wall blue?
We're not talking about that.
I know, but it's your business, and so you have the right to decide the conditions of the business.
Now, the government, through, see, the government, they have guns.
They could just tell you, look, you're going to do what we say or we're going to put you out of business.
Yeah, but you're confusing things.
Look, we as conservatives to keep telling the government that we don't want them, that we could perform all civic duties or most civic duties without the government.
And yet we're going to come around and say, well, you know what?
We're going to start discriminating.
That is, first of all, it's hypocritical.
Second, it's reckless, okay?
And we're going to alienate a lot of people.
The problem that I have with liberals, and the reason why I'm a real person.
Wait, wait, wait, wait a minute.
Before you go, it's because Republicans use common sense.
Wait a minute, or I will have to cut you off.
Now, what I'm saying is that I find a person discriminating on the basis of race.
I find that personally offensive.
I think it is offensive to tell a person, you can't come in my store because you're a Puerto Rican, because you are Mexican, because you are white.
I find that personally offensive.
But I think that it's the person's right to do so.
Your private home, if it's your farm, maybe.
And a public business where you have to open to the public.
If you say, no one over 21, if you say this is a private club, fine.
But when you open that and you let the public in, you need to let the public in of all colors, of all creeds, of all races, of all ages.
I totally disagree with what you're saying.
The problem with libertarians and the problem that I have with Randall, the same as the liberals, is that they're intellectuals and they're not using common sense.
And you're not using common sense here.
And we're going to shoot ourselves in the foot and we're going to lose a huge amount of voters because of not using common sense.
We as Republicans, we're not libertarians, we're Republicans.
As Republicans, we are conservative.
We have to include more people.
I'm not.
Look, wait a minute.
Wait a minute.
I am not a Republican.
I'm first an American.
And if you had to identify my political sentiments, I'm probably, I probably call myself a Jeffersonian liberal or a Madisonian liberal.
That is, those people who are the founders of our nation who believe that the federal government should be limited and that we should obey the United States Constitution.
Now, the question is, if there's no constitutional authority for the federal government to come in and ban discrimination, are you going to say, well, well, the federal government should do it anyway, and the heck with the Constitution.
No, I mean...
But, wait, hold it, hold it.
You're...
You have to answer the question.
That is, if the federal government has no authority under the Constitution, should it act unconstitutionally?
No, but the problem that we're running into here is that we're not, again, we're not using common sense to get more people to.
Okay, but no, no, I don't care about common sense.
I don't care about good ideas or bad ideas.
I'm asking, is it permissible under the United States Constitution for the federal government to ban private discrimination?
Is it?
I'm not under constitutional lawyers.
I'm telling you that it is not.
It's nowhere in the Constitution.
Right.
And so now, the state of Florida can.
And that's indeed what the, and matter of fact, while the state of Florida can do it, I would disagree that if Florida did do it.
But see, the point that we have to get, we have to get people to love liberty.
And to love liberty, you have to be a brave person because you have to trust that people will do those voluntary things that you find offensive.
That is, this is the problem that we're facing as a nation.
Too many Americans wish to control the lives of other people using guns and coercion and intimidation.
And that should be offensive to American principles.
That is, if you go to a store, a guy says, look, I don't allow any Jews in my store.
Well, maybe you should say, well, yeah, it's your right to, but I think it's wrong.
It's not moral.
It's not a good idea.
This is your fellow man.
I think you should change your behavior.
Look, you make a compelling argument, and technically, you're right, okay?
I'm not going to say you're not.
But what I'm trying to tell you is Rand Paul is trying to run as a senator for the United States Congress, for the Senate, okay?
And here's the problem.
When you take such philosophical, hard stance, and when you think as an intellectual and not as someone who sides with the people, it's going to cause problems not only for himself, but for the party in general.
And you know what?
You know what?
I think you're right about that, Juan.
That is, you're absolutely right about that.
And that's why some people tell me, Williams, how come you don't run for high office?
How come you don't run for the presidency?
How come you don't run for the Senate?
You know what I tell people?
I say, if I had to run for high political office, I would have to rise above principle and do the right thing.
I would have to compromise my principles, and I'm not willing to do so.
And Juan is absolutely right because the tragedy is that today's Americans will not elect a person to office with high principles.
That is, what I'm saying, and it's a true tragedy of our country, that is, if Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, James Madison, if they were running for the United States presidency today, the American people would run them out of town on the rail.
They would tar and feather these people because the American people find their ideas offensive.
That is, you know, when Madison was trying to explain to the American people what was in the Constitution in Federalist Paper 45, he said, the powers that we gave the federal government are few and well-defined and restricted mostly to external affairs.
Those left with the people and the states are indefinite and numerous.
If you turn that upside down, you'd have what we had today.
That is, the powers of the federal government are indefinite and numerous.
And you know why they're indefinite and numerous?
Because people like Juan, good people, have asked the government to come in to places and do things that it was not constitutionally authorized to do.
We'll be back with your calls after this.
It's Walter Williams sitting here pushing back their frontiers of ignorance.
Sometimes a very difficult job, but let's go to the phones and welcome Kirk from Fredericksburg, Virginia.
Welcome to the show, Kirk.
Hey, Walter, thank you.
Hey, I have a question for you about the NAACP and their practice of boycotting businesses and other things.
And we're going to call, we have a brand new movie theater open here in Fredericksburg, Virginia, which we're in a big Civil War history area here.
And the movie theater had an artist come in and paint a picture, a Civil War picture.
And on that picture, they had a picture of the Confederate flag and American flag.
Well, some people complained about it.
And I went to ask the manager why, and he said, well, they didn't want the NAACP out front boycotting the theater.
So they painted over the Confederate flag.
To me, that changed history.
And, you know, it's kind of interesting that the American flag, the stars and bars, the ships are carrying the stars and bars that brought slaves from Africa and other places to the United States.
So do you want to get rid of the American flag?
And that's my point to him.
I said, look, I said, right across me is a pub that has the English flag.
They fought the Revolutionary War.
I said, I'm offended by that.
I said, how come, I understand you don't want to offend people, but every time a black person complains and NWCP comes up, every business runs like, oh, my God, we can't do that.
Well, see, okay, see, this is why.
This is exactly why.
Some years ago, I wrote my gift.
That is what this gift, if you go to my website, walterewilliams.com, and click on gifts.
And what it is, it's a certificate of amnesty and pardon.
That is, what I've done, I've given full and general amnesty and pardon to all white Americans or all Americans of European ancestry, both for their own grievances and those of their forebears against my people.
And the reason why I grant this pardon is because you stop feeling guilty and stop acting like fools.
That is, you know, you tell the people who tell you to take down the Confederate flag, you tell them to go play in the traffic.
I mean, pick at the theater in the middle of the street during the traffic rush.
That's what you tell them.
If you had any guts, if you did not feel guilty, that's what you should do.
Let's go to Rod from Memphis.
Welcome.
How are you?
Okay.
Can you hear me?
And I, you know, and I love that hotel, Doggone in Memphis where they had the ducks, Peabody.
Wonderful hotel.
Have you been there?
No, I haven't.
Well, at five o'clock every day, the ducks get out of the pond and walk to the elevator and go to sleep.
Well, I bet that's real nice.
I'll have to go down there.
They're so cute, too.
But go ahead.
What's your question?
I just wanted to say I'm just a random listener.
I just happen to be flipping through the channel.
And I just overheard you talking, and I just, sort of, I don't know, baffles, I guess, word I could use.
I disagree with everything that you're saying, especially on the discrimination.
Okay, well, let me just start.
Let's go bit by bit.
I'm going to give you a time.
Do you believe that I have the right to discriminate against, let's say, Chinese woman to marry?
No.
Well, okay, you said you're against discrimination, didn't you?
Well, let me make sure.
I think all forms of discrimination is wrong.
You're making it sound like based on some level of knowledge or understanding that it's okay.
No, okay, look.
Now, here's, I was just really joking.
I shouldn't, that was a bad joke, the first one, about marriage.
But I think that there's a lot of confusion about discrimination, about these terms.
And this is why, matter of fact, if you go to my website, I have a publication.
It's called Discrimination, the Law versus Morality.
Just click on their publications, and it's an article that I wrote some years ago for the Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy.
And I point out that there's a lot of confusion on these issues, and because we don't use the words right.
Now, discrimination, I say in this article, is simply the act of choice.
That is, when you choose, when I chose to work at George Mason University, I discriminated against other universities to work at.
When I choose one wife to marry, I discriminated against other.
You have to discriminate because discrimination is the act of choice.
It's wrong.
Pardon me?
It's wrong.
The example that you gave, Dave, is just, I per se, your take on it.
But bottom line, based on what you just said, it's wrong.
You don't discriminate?
I try not to to the best of my ability.
Okay, okay.
For example, what do you mean?
Well, okay, you live in Memphis, right?
I do.
Well, how come you don't live in Richmond, Virginia?
I can't live in one place at one time.
So you have to discriminate.
You can't.
Discrimination?
That's a choice.
That's what discrimination is.
It's the act of choice.
No, no, you're taking discrimination to a level.
You're taking discrimination out of the context of the word itself.
You're making discrimination something else.
That's what it is.
Not a choice.
I mean, I'm not sure.
If I choose to eat ice cream over candy, then I like ice cream.
I want an ice cream.
Yeah.
Yeah, you're discriminating in favor of ice cream over candy.
So anyway, but look, we have to get operational definitions to these terms that we use, or else there'll be a lot of confusion like we had with Rod.
We'll be back with your calls after this.
We're back, and that's Walter E. Williams holding fourth, Pushing Back the Frontiers of Ignorance.
And speaking of discrimination, in the next hour, we're going to talk about that a little bit because President Barack Obama, he's recently said, at some point, you have made enough money.
That's what we're going to talk about.
It's a column written by my good friend and colleague, Thomas Soule, called Enough Money.
And then I'm going to talk about the salt tyrants, the people who want to correct your salt-eating habits.
But let's go back to the phones.
And by the way, look, before we get to the phones, look, there are three terms that we should pay attention to.
One is discrimination, the act of choice.
Then there's another term that's in this article I've written, very, very excellent article, I must say.
It's prejudice.
And prejudice is just really prejudging.
That is, and economists can say prejudice is really acting on the base of incomplete information.
And we do it all the time.
That is, suppose there's a room and you're all talking in a room, and let's say like my classroom.
And when the class ended, you walk out there and you see a full-grown tiger out there.
What are you going to do?
The average person is going to endeavor to leave the area in great dispatch.
Now, okay, that's uninteresting.
But why?
Is it because of any detailed information that he has about that particular tiger?
Or is he basing his decision on tiger folklore, how he's seen other tigers behave, what his mother has told him about tigers?
More than likely, it's the latter.
Now, if he did not prejudge, if he was not prejudiced, he would try to get some more information about that tiger before he ran.
You know, he would kind of pat the tiger on the head and see whether he's friendly.
And then only if the tiger lunged at him, he would run.
And then the last thing is preference indulgence.
That is to indulge your tastes.
And so there's three things, discrimination, prejudice, and preference indulgence.
Now, I know this is kind of heavy, but what we have to do if we're going to discuss these terms and these ideas rationally, we have to come up with operational terms or operational definitions for the terms we use.
That is, we can't say, well, discrimination can mean prejudice, it can mean stereotypes, it can mean preference indulgence.
We have to come up with operational definitions.
And we might do a little bit of that of the next hour.
But however, what I want to talk about the next hour is how you people have invited government into our lives.
And I don't know how we're going to get them out, but if we're going to be free, we need to get them out.
So the next hour, it's going to be Salt Tyrants and Thomas Soules, Enough Money.
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